Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
